KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The NewStart offices at the Nazarene Church headquarters in Kansas City, Kan., announced Aug. 18 the official registration of 1,000 new churches since the recording began in 1994. The milestone was posted on www.NewStartUSA.org and signals a new day of cooperation and collaboration among Nazarene churches and districts, according to NCN News.

Many new churches have started from congregations partnering together in sponsorship. While the effort has expressed itself in multiple forms among the various cultural groups, the bottom line has remained the same: hundreds are being won to Christ by starting strong Nazarene congregations all across the United States and Canada.

The registry shows broad participation on multiple levels of church leadership. The 1,000th registration came from the sponsoring congregation of Springdale Church of the Nazarene on the Southwest Ohio district.

"We know that new churches continue to be the best way to win new people to Christ," said Springdale Pastor Rick Harvey in an interview with GROW magazine. "This church has a wonderful heritage in reaching out to our ministry area, with multiple ministries focused on particular needs. But we also know other new churches are needed to impact areas our church can never reach."

Pastor Craig and Beth Harden are the NewStart leaders Springdale plans to sponsor. They hope to launch the new church in 2005.

Their plans also reflect nearly 500 additional NewStarts in process of starting that have not officially registered yet. The NewStart office reports that a total of 1,500 New Nazarene churches will be registered within the next 12 months. In fact, by the growing levels of participation, trends indicate the denomination could actually start more than 2,000 new churches by the 2008 Centennial Celebration.